La décision de base ayant donné lieu à la requête en révision était un recours sur opposition s'étant soldé par la révocation du brevet européen.
Le requérant soutient que, lors de la procédure orale, la Chambre n'a donnée aucune indication relative à un point crucial sur lequel la décision est basée. De plus, la Chambre n'aurait pas fait savoir au cours de la procédure qu'elle allait suivre un raisonnement s'écartant de la jurisprudence et conduisant à conclure que D1 serait rendu accessible au public avant la date de priorité. Il y aurait donc violation fondamentale de l'art.113 CBE, ce qui est un motif de requête en révision sous art.112bis(2)(c).
La requête est considérée admissible. Un point crucial était de décider si, oui ou non, le bibliothécaire qui reçoit, tamponne les ouvrages (dont le fameux D1), et les indexe au catalogue est un membre du public ou non.
Bien sûr, il se trouve que l'ouvrage tamponné D1 n'est pas pour rien dans la révocation du brevet du requérant...
La Grande Chambre rappelle que la notification prévue à l'art.15(1) RPCR n'est pas une obligation :
2.2 Regarding the petitioner's complaint that the Board did not issue a communication under Article 15(1) RPBA, the Enlarged Board can see no breach of the procedural rules. That provision does not oblige a Board to issue communications drawing attention to matters of special significance; it merely gives it discretion to do so. If the Board decided not to issue a communication, it can be assumed that it regards the whole file – i.e. in particular all points of view present in the appeal proceedings about the requirements for public availability of documents in libraries – as relevant for the discussion at the oral proceedings. Consequently, both the Board and the parties are entitled to stress aspects which in their view require consideration.
Quant au droit d'être entendu, la Grande Chambre estime d'une part que l'opposant avait soulevé ce point, et d'autre part qu'il suffisait de prendre la perche tendue par le membre juriste... D'autant plus, selon elle, que le mandataire a bien compris où ledit membre voulait en venir !
2.4 Furthermore, it is clear from both the grounds of the petition and the observations of the petitioner during the oral proceedings before the Enlarged Board that the crucial question was discussed by the Technical Board. This follows from the specific questions asked by the legal member namely what the reaction would be if the librarian took the document and filed a patent application and why, if a single consumer could be considered to represent the public, could a librarian not likewise be so considered? For the petitioner's professional representative, it had to be clear that the legal issue addressed by these questions was whether a single individual, in particular a librarian not bound by a secrecy agreement, could be considered as constituting the public? And it is clear that he did indeed understand the reasons for these queries, because he answered that the librarian would not be an end user, that he could neither read nor understand the document, and that he would be bound by an implicit confidentiality agreement. All these arguments were an attempt on his part to refute the underlying premise that an individual librarian could inherently be considered a member of the public within the meaning of Article 54(2) EPC.
Eh oui... Quant à l'argument selon lequel la Chambre se serait éloignée de la jurisprudence, la Grande Chambre est, disons, dubitative :
2.7 The Enlarged Board is not convinced by the petitioner's assertion that the Technical Board failed to discuss the question of public availability of documents in public libraries in terms of purportedly established and consistent case law. Contrary to the submissions of the petitioner, the Enlarged Board has difficulty to speak of established case law about a notion whose definition depends on the evaluation of factual circumstances and not on the application of a principle of law. [...]
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